1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the automated extraction, aggregation and analysis of support information for networked devices, and particularly but not exclusively for mass-produced hard disk drive controller devices attached to storage area networks having storage virtualization appliances.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of this invention it is known that in today's heterogeneous Storage Area Network (SAN) environment users can connect almost any Fibre-Channel controller device to their SAN and use the storage it is providing. With the advent of virtualization devices, especially symmetric virtualization devices, this storage can be handled in device-agnostic ways using the virtualizer as the central point of control in a SAN.
However, not all devices are supported by every SAN virtualizer and, moreover, every controller device may act in subtly different ways from other controllers in the system. The virtualizer therefore in theory can support any controller device that is presenting storage, but can only use the supported devices and only the commonly-implemented protocols. Any specific controller device may not be configured or optimally configured for use by, or be optimally used by, the virtualizer.
As an example, consider that many different implementations of the Small Computer Serial Interface (SCSI) exist in different devices. Each device supports a slightly different subset of the totality of the SCSI commands that are available in the SCSI command interface. When such devices are in communication with standard hardware and software, it is necessary to limit communication to the intersection of each participant's supported subset of commands. This in turn limits the functionality that is available to the system as a whole, and this is clearly undesirable.
Today there is no easy way to determine exactly what storage controllers a customer is attaching to a virtualizer without market research or other humanly-performed techniques. This being the case, there is no fast, simple way of determining that there is a greater requirement among customers for support of one type of device or additional command subset than there is for support of another device or additional command subset. There is likewise no fast and simple way, in a service call situation, of determining whether the problem has been caused by an attempt to use an unsupported device or an unsupported (or not yet supported) subset of the supported device controls. A need therefore exists for an improved system and method for device control support analysis wherein the above mentioned disadvantages may be alleviated.